The Night Before
by TrapezoidalGreenOnes
Summary: It's not a good idea to attempt conversation while frustrated and jetlagged. Sean McKinley finds this out the hard way.  Prequel to Breakfast


He rolls over once again. Nope, this bed still doesn't feel comfortable – which doesn't make sense, given that for the past two years, he spent every night wondering if it would be that night that the bed would collapse beneath him. He keeps expecting Elder Thomas to be in a similar bed next to him, either snoring gently, or muttering to himself. Instead, he's on his own, in a room that feels far too large for just one person. Glancing at the bedside clock, he can't keep himself from groaning. Was it only 2am?

He sighs. Apparently, you can't force yourself to sleep through sheer willpower. Thinking back to Uganda, the solution finally comes to him: Warm milk was fantastic as a sleeping aid. Would it be able to overcome this jetlag, though? He suspects not, since it's morning in Kampala, and he already feels too awake to successfully sleep. Even if it didn't work, it would still pass some time before the sun rose.

It's strange how much can come back so quickly – he knows to avoid the third step from the top, as it's notoriously squeaky, and finding the light switch to the kitchen is almost child's play. A few seconds later, he works out that he must have turned the kitchen lights off, as the room seemed to be just as dark as the hallway he'd just been in. He quickly turns the lights back on, and enters the kitchen wondering who he'd just left in the dark (and hoping that they hadn't been trying to handle warm milk at the time...).

His sister's sitting at the table, eating what appears to be leftover cake from the 'Welcome home' party that had happened earlier that evening. He feels that he should make some sort of comment about this, but right now all he wants to do is successfully manage to get the milk from the bottle into the saucepan without dropping or spilling anything, and this would be much easier if he'd just been able to sleep on the flight back from Africa. Instead, he'd been forced into making conversation on the road trip back from Salt Lake City airport, then he'd been dragged off to a party that he can only really remember fragments from, with the rest of it blurring together. Bishop Goodman sticks out in his mind – telling him that he was expected to lead the Sunday service, and tell the congregation of what happened on his mission (wow, that sounded like so much fun!).

It's a minor miracle that he manages to get the warmed milk into a mug without spilling any, or dropping the saucepan. He's pretty sure that waking up the rest of his family at this time of night would not be the best plan, even though they should be expecting the jetlag to be getting to him. Amy's still sitting on the other side of the table, apparently finished with the cake, though she didn't seem inclined to go back upstairs. At least she isn't trying to force an awkward conversation between them – he's not sure that his brain can actually form coherent speech at the moment.

How could being back in Utah make him feel worse than being in Uganda? Here, he had food that didn't consist of poptarts and instant noodles, electricity that was unlikely to suddenly disappear, no warlords causing trouble for the area's residents (though, to be fair, General Butt F-ing Naked had been a lot better since he'd converted to the Book of Arnold's teachings). Not to mention the fact that here, they didn't execute people like him for being themselves. It had taken him a significant amount of time to stop blaming himself for his feelings – strangely enough, it was a chapter in Elder Cunningham's book about two men called Kirk and Spock who were able to find acceptance that had helped him the most. By the time that his mission had finished (had it only been less than a day since he was saying goodbye to all of them?), he considered himself to be about as out as he could be given the location. At least, all of the people in the Kitguli area knew, and actually seemed to be okay with it. Even the other Elders (though it took much longer for some than others) grew to accept that perhaps it really wasn't a choice, or a mental illness.

Now that he was back, he'd have to revert to turning it off. He's pretty sure that his parents have been busy trying to find him potential girlfriends while he was away, and he expects that he'll have to endure many talks from his father about it being the right time for him to get married and settle down with the right woman, and have that big family with lots of grandchildren, and he can't think of anything he'd like to do less. Of course he'd expected his mission to change him – just not so dramatically.

Amy's looking at him now, with a puzzled look on her face. Clearly, his face is telling her everything that he's thinking. He's tired of keeping secrets, he's tired of not being able to be himself, he's tired of not being able to sleep.

"Sean, if there's something on your mind, you know you can always tell me anything. I mean, I know that things might seem different know, coming back from your mission and all that, but we could always tell each other everything. I don't want that to change, ever. So, come out with it. What's bug-"

"Amy, I'm gay."

Why did she have to use that exact phrasing? Oh, gosh, did he just say it out loud? He's reminded of the time that she managed to drag a confession out of him as to where her Liza Minelli CDs had disappeared to. If she tells their parents, he's...

"I know."

Huh. That wasn't what he was expecting to hear. Had he really been so obvious? It must have been his suitcase. Or it could have been...

"Stop beating yourself up about it. I'm the only one in the family who actually paid enough attention to you to notice, and I'm not going to say anything to anyone else."

"Oh. Well, thanks."

He'd never been that fantastic at chatting with her at the best of times. The age gap of five years sometimes proved to be a bit too much when it came to life experience. It's not surprising that another awkward silence arises.

"How long have you known that you were..."

"I think I've always known, really. Especially when all of my friends were talking about which girls in our class they were going to marry, and I didn't know how to join in with those conversations, since I knew that I didn't like girls in the same way that they did."

She nods, which he assumes is her showing him that she understands. The milk's getting cold, and he's feeling even more exhausted and emotionally drained than he was earlier. He checks his watch – 2:30am.

"I think I'm going to try sleeping again."

He doesn't even wait for a response before closing the kitchen door behind him. Did that really just happen? Did he actually just tell his sister his biggest secret without even thinking about it? And was she actually okay with it? He doesn't even remember to take off his slippers before he collapses onto his bed. This time, he would definitely get a few hours sleep.

Just before he drifts off, a few thoughts still play on his mind. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad here after all. Although Amy was just one person, if she was this accepting of him, maybe other people around would be as well.

Now, how can he possibly tell people that he now follows the Book of Arnold?


End file.
